Author Archives: Artist Profile
REVIEW | Mia Khin Boe: Walking About
Visually, the work unfolds like a page from a storybook. Figures appear to stand together, perhaps even holding hands. Boe’s work references the proclamation boards issued by George Arthur, Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen’s Land, now Tasmania, between 1824 and 1836. His Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1828–30, used pictograms to communicate the idea of equality […]
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Tagged Amélie Blanc, Australia’s Proclamation of the Aborigines 2026, Mia Boe, Mia Khin Boe, Sutton Gallery
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ESSAY | In Defence of Not Knowing: Être and the Art of Reflection
Genuine reflection, the quiet, unresolved, sometimes uncomfortable kind, feels increasingly rare. We are seldom invited to sit with what we do not yet understand. This is where art can still matter; not as decoration, not as therapy, and not as moral instruction; but as a rare site of inwardness. And yet, without inwardness, social / […]
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Tagged Dagmar Cyrulla, Lennox Street Gallery, reflection, Reminiscing, Revealing the Nude
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REVIEW: Westwood | Kawakubo: In Dialogue
As the title Westwood | Kawakubo suggests, the National Gallery of Victoria’s (NGV) latest fashion exhibition plays to the idea that these two titans of contemporary design need no qualification. Their names are synonymous with the redefining of fashion over the past fifty years. Born a year apart, Vivienne Westwood (1941–2022) and Rei Kawakubo’s (1942–) […]
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Tagged designer clothing, fashion, Kawakubo, Laura Jocic, National Gallry of Victoria, NGV, Westwood
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REVIEW | Jen Valender: (It is Necessary to) Learn to Swim and Chaohui Xie: 18 Generations
Operating within a commercial framework yet not representing artists, Project8 allows for a greater sense of curatorial freedom, privileging thematic and carefully considered exhibitions over fixed affiliation. The expansive gallery, connected to Art @ Collins and the University of Melbourne, is curated by Kim Donaldson with Jiayang Zhang. Carrying the same title as the exhibition, […]
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Tagged Amélie Blanc, Chaohui Xie, Jen Valender, Jiayang Zhang, Kim Donaldson, Project8 Gallery
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REVIEW | Abattoir Blues, Ron Mueck’s Sculpted Humanity
Ron Mueck’s shockingly alive sculptures hit us at many points along the pathway from birth to death. But it’s more than just mortal decay that concerns him. Mueck is interested in our spiritual life, the spark inside that won’t say die. It’s this soulfulness that drives his work into a struggle zone to understand who and […]
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Tagged Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of NSW, Havoc 2025, Mark Mordue, Ron Mueck, Ron Mueck: Encounter, Woman with Shopping 2013
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REVIEW | Women Photographers 1900–1975: A Legacy of Light
Women Photographers 1900–1975: A Legacy of Light draws on more than 300 photographs and photomedia from the National Gallery of Victoria’s (NGV) collection and the affiliated Shaw Research Library. The Gallery’s curator Maggie Finch shapes material that is disparate in subject, technique, and intention into a coherent passage through photographic modernity. Viewers are reasonably asked […]
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Tagged National Gallery of Victoria, NGV, Peter McKay, photography, Women Photographers 1900-1975
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Issue 73
Editor’s Note In this issue there is a moving tribute to William Robinson AO who died in August. Back in 2017 William appeared on the cover of Artist Profile issue 41. He was surprised to be asked. Louise Martin-Chew interviewed William then and she has written the tribute for him now. There are many […]
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REVIEW: Tina Stefanou | Motet Fail
Motet Fail, 2026, reshapes Artist Run Initiative, West Space into an immersive backgammon board that operates as a site of reflection, encounter, and quiet concert. Tina Stefanou collaborated with Romanie Harper and Aldo Bilotta on the design and construction of the set and objects for Motet Fail, and with West Space director and curator Joanna […]
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Tagged Amélie Blanc, Joanna Kitto, Kosta Stefanou, Motet Fail 2026, Tina Stefanou, Wake for Horses 2021, West Space
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Review: Janet Koongotema
Carvings have been made for all time by Aurukun men. However, the more recent innovation to emerge from Aurukun are paintings. Vested in Country and experience of place, created by Aurukun women since 2008, they have drawn attention all over the world. Mavis Ngallametta (1944–2019) was exhibited from 2008, culminating in the Queensland Art Gallery […]
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Tagged Archer River Story, D Lan Galleries, Janet Koongotema, Louise Martin-Chew
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REVIEW: Lynda Draper’s Garden of Earthly Delights
A stone’s throw from the Illawarra escarpment at Campbelltown Arts Centre, the introduction to Draper’s ecosphere is a gathering of rainbow forms which, as an entrée, signal a period of transition and presents the most heterogenous arrangement in Glimmer. Cultural references are pluralist and synthesised across archetypal forms suggestive of Haniwa (Japanese unglazed clay mortuary […]
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Tagged Campbelltown Arts Centre, Emily Rolfe, Lynda Draper, Silversalt Photography, Una Rey
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REVIEW | The Volcanic Sublime: Werner Herzog’s The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft
In 1991, Maurice and Katia Krafft died during the Mount Unzen eruption on Japan’s island of Kyushu. Herzog’s documentary does meditate on their deaths and the notion of “impending doom,” but his concerns are the Kraffts’ humanity and their mythic imagery. He is not interested in the couple as people per se – their lives […]
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Tagged Aleks Wansbrough, Katia and Maurice Krafft, The Fire Within: A Requiem For Katia and Maurice Krafft, Werner Herzog
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REVIEW: The Talented Arrowsmith-Todd
Ruby Arrowsmith–Todd started attending the AGNSW film program in its early days as a self-educated, die-hard film fan, immersing herself in the cinematic sea of curator Robert Herbert’s vision. His film program ran for seventeen years before his untimely death. He would be a mentor for Arrowsmith-Todd, as well as a close friend, and under […]
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Tagged Art Gallery of New South Wales, H. R. Hyatt-Johnston, Ruby Arrowsmith–Todd, Sydney Cinémathèque
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PROFILE | Jim Lambie: The Language of the City
For most painters, tape has a prophylactic function. Stuck temporarily onto a canvas (or a doorframe, for that matter), tape protects what lies beneath or preserves the integrity of a newly painted edge or line. There are figurative muralists like the Tape Art duo Michael Townsend and Leah Smith; there have been moments in recent […]
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Tagged Jack Howard, Jim Lambie, Jim Lambie Cool Breeze 2026, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Zobop
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PROFILE | Deborah Halpern: Whimsical Joy
Deborah Halpern’s studio is engulfed with works in progress occasionally dispersed with other images and sculptures that illicit happiness. In the vast double window space, Halpern is surrounded by her creatures in various states of becoming. Sculptures in their nascent fibreglass stages are lined up on the shelves, others hang from the ceiling on self-crafted […]
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Tagged Angel 1988, Deborah Halpern, Dove 2024, National Gallery of Victoria
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PROCESS | Catherine Clayton-Smith
I recently left my home-studio on the Vaucluse clifftops in Sydney, with the whale and ocean views, and have set up a new studio in Collingwood, Melbourne. At the time of writing, I am deep in preparation for my solo exhibition with Olsen Gallery, in February 2026. Just like moving cities, beginning a new series […]
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Tagged Catherine Clayton-Smith, Olsen Gallery
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PREVIEW | The 2026 Beechworth Biennale
On a research trip to see the disused Mayday Hills Asylum, where Mike Parr will create his video projection on the exterior of the Birches building for the upcoming 2026 Beechworth Biennale, I had the opportunity to meet with Nina Machielse Hunt. I asked her about the event’s genesis. “During the COVID-19 lockdowns I home-schooled […]
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Tagged Beechworth Biennale; Dr Peter Hill;, Locust Jones, Nina Machielse Hunt
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REVIEW | Ken Done: Done Right
The exhibition opens with paintings that place Done in conversation with some of the great names of art history. He has always been something of an iconoclast, a painter unafraid of drawing inspiration from others while insisting on his own distinct voice. One of the early highlights, Starry, starry, starry night, 1998, is an emphatic […]
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Tagged Bradley Vincent, Gold Cost, Home of the Arts, HOTA, Ken Done, Ken Done: No Rules, Queensland
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ESSAY | Part 1: Does the demand for accountability really account for art?
Museums and galleries often attempt to decolonise their collections and embrace diversity, equity and accessibility by ditching the elevated status of the artist. Yet artist narratives still reign supreme as we are encouraged to judge the work through the creator’s biography. Suzanne Cotter, the Museum of Contemporary Art director, is quoted as saying, “if you […]
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Tagged Aleks Wansbrough, Artist Profile Issue 72, Donald Friend, Frida Kahlo, Guernica, Khaled Sabsabi, Picasso
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REVIEW: Thomas Demand: The Object Lesson
Kaldor Public Art Project 38 is in the Naala Badu building (the term for “seeing waters” in the Gadigal language). Demand, as it happens, has an indirect affiliation with Naala Badu. Over the years, he conducted research visits to Tokyo at SANAA, the distinguished architectural firm led by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, responsible for […]
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Tagged Alan Krell, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of NSW, Artist Profile Issue 73, Kaldor Public Art Project, Kaldor Public Art Project 38, Thomas Demand
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ESSAY: Judging art prizes in Australia
Australia’s addiction to art prizes is difficult to comprehend. To the best of my knowledge, Australia has more art prizes per head of population than any other country in the world. There are about seventy-five major art prizes and up to 900 smaller ones. Some may explain it as part of our national betting culture, […]
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Tagged 2022, 2022 winner of the Archibald Prize in 2022; Ksenija Hrnjak, 2022; Blak Douglas, 2022. Photographed by Art Gallery of New South Wales, Archibald, art prizes, Installation view, Moby Dickens, paintings from the left: Jeremy Eden, Red gloves of Tim Tszyu, Samuel Johnson OAM, Sulman Prize, The Archibald Prize, Wynne and Sulman Prizes, Wynne Prize
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BOOK REVIEW: John Berger and Me
The measure of how much I enjoyed this book is that as I was reading it I was also compiling my list of Top Ten Books of the 21st Century for ABC Radio National’s poll of its audience. I placed John Berger and Me, 2024, by Nikos Papastergiadis in second place behind Wittgenstein’s Poker, 2001, by David Edmonds and […]
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Tagged Artist Profile Issue 73, Greek migrant experience, John Berger, John Berger and Me, Nikos Papastergiadis, Peter Hill, Ways of Seeing
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REVIEW | J.W. Power: Art, war and the avant-garde
Australian art history still holds many gaps. The life and work of John Joseph Wardell Power (1881–1943) is one of them. Curated by Ann Stephen, senior curator of art at the Chau Chak Wing Museum, and her collaborator ADS Donaldson, J.W. Power: Art, War and the avant-garde seeks to redress that gap and place Power […]
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Tagged Artist Profile Issue 73, avant-garde, cubism, David Ellis, J.W Power, La Femme à l’ombrelle
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REVIEW | Mitch Cairns: Restless Legs
Mitch Cairns: Restless Legs was commissioned for the Contemporary Projects series at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, where it was first presented in early 2025. Cairns is no stranger to the AGNSW, having won the Archibald Prize in 2017 with a portrait of partner and fellow artist Agatha Gothe-Snape, but Restless […]
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Tagged Judith Blackall, Mitch Cairns, Restless Legs, Wollongong Art Gallery
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